


put your lips on my skin and you might ignite it

by gingermaggie



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Tattoos, for about the next 12 minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggie
Summary: Julie gets her first tattoo at age seven. It's a tiny, crooked flower. Carrie Wilson doodles it on her arm in sharpie during social studies, and Julie marvels at the magic of it.She gets her first real, actual, needle-and-ink, permanent tattoo a few years after the start of Julie and the Phantoms. And then she just keeps getting them.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 211
Collections: jatpdaily secret santa 2020





	put your lips on my skin and you might ignite it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexjulies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexjulies/gifts).



> Happy holidays [Olivia/tumblr user alexjulies](https://alexjulies.tumblr.com/)!! I hope it has been and continues to be the most wonderful time of the year :D 
> 
> This fic was written for [@jatpdaily's secret santa exchange](https://jatpdaily.tumblr.com/post/635711933547479040/thank-you-to-everyone-who-signed-up-to) and was so delightful to play around with! 
> 
> \--
> 
> Title from "My Strange Addiction" by Billie Eilish

0 

Julie gets her first tattoo at age seven. It's a tiny, crooked flower. Carrie Wilson doodles it on her arm in sharpie during social studies, and Julie marvels at the magic of it. 

There’s something special and exciting about putting a picture directly on her body. She’d never considered it before. She can show something about herself, about what she likes, about how she wants to look. Like fixing her hair fancy or putting on new shoes, but more personal, and more fleeting. She gets hooked on the idea pretty much immediately, and new drawings begin to appear on her almost as fast as they fade. 

Her dad, always a bit the more paranoid of the Molinas, seems somewhat concerned about the long-term effects of the ink and a too-imminent transition to a desire for more permanent body alterations, but her mom just laughs and only halfheartedly attempts to scrub the drawings off at bathtime, always complimenting the artistry and making up little songs about each new design.   
  
Her whole life, Julie is a musician first and foremost, but of course she's something of an artist, too. Whether it's doodling on her microphone or her sneakers or drawing concept art for album covers, the process of drawing has always been, if not _as_ soothing as writing music, a pretty decent second and sometimes a more accessible option. Her skin, ultimately, is just another canvas. 

Drawing fake tattoos with Carrie is a common pastime in elementary school. They painstakingly copy their favorite cartoon characters onto their shoulders, sketch out crooked hearts on the backs of their hands, draw swirling patterns of meaningless color across their knees. They scrawl into skin the names of their celebrity crushes and lyrics from whatever songs they’re obsessed with any given week. There’s a solid month of fifth grade where Julie has lyrics from Long Weekend, her favorite song of Carrie’s dad's, sharpied onto her arm, re-inking it whenever it starts to fade. 

She and Flynn keep up the tradition in middle school, even after Julie and Carrie stop hanging out, but it’s a habit that fades over time, as many things do in the transition to high school: lost behind the concern of what other people might think and how much homework there is to do and other larger, personal, heartbreaking tragedies. Still, Julie’s skin sings as much as the rest of her. 

1 

She gets her first real, actual, needle-and-ink, permanent tattoo a few years after the start of Julie and the Phantoms. It probably would have happened earlier, but Ray won’t give the parental permission to waive the age limit. Still, he promises that if she waits til she’s eighteen he won’t put up a fight, even if he doesn’t love the idea of his little girl permanently etching something into her skin. 

It was Reggie’s idea for them to get matching tattoos in the first place—because honestly, the best ideas are often Reggie’s, especially when it comes to group bonding and family adventures. 

Besides, there’s just something that’s still jaw dropping and novel, even after almost three years, about the fact that the guys have bodies that are _able_ to be tattooed. 

After the Orpheum, when the stamps had peeled off their wrists and Julie had been able to hug them, none of them had expected the miracle to last. It felt shimmering in unreality, a dream that would dissolve at the first light that wasn’t emanating from their bodies. A gift that they should delight in perhaps especially because it was temporary. 

And then they just...kept being solid. Julie had left them (finally, finally, begrudgingly) in the garage that night with strict instructions to hide if, for whatever reason, someone came in who might be able to see them. She fully anticipated returning tomorrow to boys made of vapor, sorrow already bitter in her chest about it, wishing they could spend forever awake in this perfect night. 

She’d almost forgotten that Carlos was waiting up, droopy eyed but determined to talk to her. When he revealed he knew about the guys, about Sunset Curve, he made himself the perfect candidate to accompany Julie back to the garage in the morning: easy proof they were back to normal, when Julie could see them and Carlos couldn’t. 

Carlos, it turned out, could see them. 

Once the shock wore off, the experimentation began, and it eventually became crystal clear that yes, they were visible to everyone, yes, they could interact with anything, yes, they were really truly physical, with heartbeats and tastebuds and all the other trappings of living humanity. 

It was...a bit of an adjustment. 

In the midst of trying to navigate changing band dynamics, the loss of their “hologram” gimmick, and finding resources like food and a place to sleep to keep the former phantoms alive—leading to the eventual decision to tell Ray all the truths—Caleb had tried to put some other nefarious scheme into practice, but once he’d realized that the boys were fully corporeal and apparently as alive as anyone else Julie had ever known, he’d thrown himself out of Nick’s body, disappearing into mist with a sneer but a slight panic in his eyes. 

Julie still worried, sometimes, that he was out there somewhere, plotting against her boys, but they hadn’t seen any sign of him since, and not for lack of looking. They finally decided, okay, this is it. This is life, and it’s good. 

Thus this point, three years later, with their musical star continuing to rise and the opportunity for their band tattoo finally here. They puzzle for a while over what to get, poring over Google results and design books and bickering over what and where and when to get them done. 

When Alex comes across an image of a simple cartoon ghost, though, it’s almost a comically easy decision. Within twenty four hours each of them has a phantom inked on the inside of their left forearm, stark and beautiful like a sign of membership in the world’s greatest club, a secret signal that only the four of them—plus Flynn, Carlos, and Ray—could ever fully understand. 

For weeks after Julie can’t stop looking at it on her arm, running her fingers over it and smiling. Her eyes keep catching on the image on the guys, too, flying through the air as Alex drums, slipping out from underneath Reggie’s flannel as he leans on walls to flirt with girls, steady on Luke’s skin as his fingers tap a pen, their faces drifting perilously close as they fiddle with new lyrics. 

“This is just going to be the first of many tattoos, isn’t it?” Ray asks, but at least he sounds resigned to it. 

2, 5, 7, 8 

Ray is right; the ghost turns out to be a slippery slope almost immediately. It’s only a few months before her right forearm gets painted with a watercolor dahlia, sprawling and lovely enough she almost can almost imagine she smells it on the breeze when she moves her arm. 

Ray had protested a little when she told him she was thinking about another tattoo, but of course he couldn’t really object once he heard her plan and saw the design. 

Once it’s done, the magic of it thrums through her veins, just like with the ghost. She runs her fingers over the petals of the dahlia and it’s not like having her mom back, but it’s like having a built-in sign that she can do it, that she’s not alone, that she can bloom. 

The ghost doesn’t have to remind her of the guys—they're here, somehow, some wonderful how—but it’s nice to have that outward-facing shout: these are my people, this is my family, we belong together, we choose each other. 

It’s a gentle kind of high, the same way she feels when she manages to express herself just right with her music. 

Other tattoos for her family trickle on to her skin bit by bit over the years. 

Above her elbow, a sketched camera watches her back and makes her dad smile whenever it catches his eye. 

On her ribs, she gets _Love, Mom,_ pulled from the “Wake Up” sheet music, carefully inked in her mother’s handwriting. 

When he’s old enough, she and Carlos get paper airplanes—Julie's behind her left ear, Carlos’s on his right elbow. They’re in the perfect spot to bump when he jostles her good-naturedly as they sprawl on the couch watching their favorite old movies, or when he leans his weight on her shoulder, taller than her now, before she laughs and shoves him off. 

3, 4, 6 

She also ends up with a lot of matching tattoos with her friends, in varying combinations. 

First, she’s just helping Alex pick out what he’ll get next. He has a few tattoos under his belt already—a quote he loves, a ring of flowers, a skateboard—and he’s ready for something new. Julie tagged along for fun and is watching over his shoulder as he flips through a book of designs, pointing out her favorites and teasing every time he considers something ugly or lame. 

But then they see a matched-set tattoo, outlines of a star and the moon, and they instantly look at each other. 

At first Julie isn’t sure if Alex is thinking about the same thing as her, of nights they’ve spent sneaking out of house parties and grungy bar gigs to sit in the cool night air looking at the stars and talking about life and death and laughter and love. But then he breaks eye contact, awkward, to look at the picture again. 

“Would you want to…” he begins, almost shy, and Julie answers before he can even get the question out. 

“Absolutely.” 

They each pick a spot on their hip for the tattoos. Alex gets the moon and Julie the star. Reggie gets emotional when he sees them and declares them _officially too cute._

After that, Flynn insists that if Julie’s going to be a tattoo person now, they had better be getting something to represent Double Trouble, because of course that should take precedence over any additional Julie and the Phantoms shenanigans or body alterations. 

They decide on a set of dice, rolled to doubles, on their ankles, and Julie is a good enough friend to pretend Flynn doesn’t yelp and panic through the tattooing process. 

After their third time binge watching _The Mandalorian_ all the way through, it’s Reggie’s enthusiastic idea to get a Star Wars tattoo. Julie is game so they get matching lightsabers—Julie's purple, on her knee; Reggie’s green, on his bicep. Carlos complains when Ray won’t let him get one, too, but Reggie and Julie promise to take him on his 18th birthday to complete the set—red, naturally, because he isn’t afraid of the power of the dark side. 

9 

Reggie and Alex both have various tattoos at this point, and even Flynn added another somewhere along the way. Reggie probably has the most of all of them, because he isn’t quite so picky about finding the most meaningful possible art or words as Julie and Alex are. If he likes something, he gets something about it tattooed, and if he likes a tattoo just for its design, he gets that too. 

Not Luke, though. The ghost stands alone on his arm, almost conspicuous in its solitude. In a way, though, Julie gets it; Luke is far more word-oriented than he is visual, and his words and thoughts are ever-shifting in a way that feels hard to pin down. It’s part of the reason Julie has never gotten any lyrics or quotes tattooed, not with anything more permanent than pen. 

By the time she’s twenty, Julie has eight tattoos, each glowing with a special piece of her heart, before she realizes she still doesn’t have perhaps the most obvious ink of all: a music note. 

She recruits Alex and Flynn to come along with her, since they respond quickest to her, _hey, what are you doing today?_ text, and basically before she can blink she has a purple music note shining on her left foot, hidden away unless she wears flip flops or her strappiest sandals. 

She’s riding her typical post-tattoo high when she makes it back to her house, heading out to the studio in hopes that she can pin down the piano melody floating around in her head. Instead, she finds Luke, sprawled out on the couch and messing around on his guitar. 

“Luke! Hey!” she says, heart skipping the same embarrassing way it always does when she sees him. 

“Hi Julie,” he replies, a big smile splitting his face. He always looks just as pleased to see her, at least, which is comforting. He instantly sets his guitar down on the floor next to the couch, clearing her a place to sit. 

Julie flops onto the couch beside him without hesitation, easy habit. 

“Where have you been?” Luke asks, half pouting. “I was looking all over for you.” 

She laughs and rolls her eyes. “It’s called a cellphone, Luke,” she teases. “I know back in your day you had to walk uphill both ways to a payphone, but you’ve had one of your own for years now.” 

Luke scrunches his nose in that annoyingly endearing way he has. “I lost it again. I know it’s in here somewhere but I think the battery is dead.” 

That earns another laugh. “You are ridiculous,” she says. 

“Whatever.” He jostles her shoulder. “But really, where were you?” 

“Oh, right!” Julie says, perking up again. “Alex drove me and Flynn to the tattoo place. I got another one. Kinda on a whim,” she laughs. “I know, I know, I’m sure my dad will have a field day,” she adds at his silence, peeling off her flat and the bandage to show it off. 

Luke studies it with a funny look on his face. She’d expected him to be more interested, to tease her for the cliché choice, to wax poetic about the power of music in their lives. 

“So Flynn got one too?” he asks instead, thoroughly confusing her. 

“No,” she says, grin only half faltering. “It’s still pulling teeth to get her in the chair. I’m sure I’ll find something cute enough to convince her soon, though.” 

Luke is still looking at her foot. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably. I’m sure you will.” 

“Is there something wrong with it?” she finally asks. 

“It’s really nice, Jules,” he says, finally meeting her eyes, and he clearly means it. But there’s something off in his tone. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, brow furrowing. 

Too quickly: “Nothing.” 

She tilts her head and shoots him a patented Julie Molina _look._

“Luke, c'mon. Spit it out.” 

"It’s nothing. It’s stupid.” Another moment and he falters under her gaze. “Fine, it‘s just, um—why don't you and I have matching tattoos?” he asks. 

Instantly, Julie blushes. She...doesn’t exactly know why. 

"Well,” she says, fiddling with her hair. “You don't have _any_ tattoos. Except the phantom, obviously.” 

Luke is still frowning, sad puppy-dog eyes in full force. She knows it isn’t a good answer, but her heart is starting to pound and her skin feels lightly tingling, all her existing ink on fire at the idea of a piece of her relationship with Luke sharing space on her flesh. 

The concept is thrilling. The concept is ridiculous. The concept is terrifying. 

Maybe it’s the fear that obliges her to continue. She picks at her bracelets, doesn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. It’s not like I haven’t...thought about it. I guess I never brought it up because it just felt too heavy. For you and me. Does that make any sense?” 

His mouth twists into a rueful smile, but when she looks right at him again his eyes are still so _sad_. “You always make sense, Jules. We’ve _talked_ about you not second guessing yourself.” His voice has a familiar teasing edge, that _you’re a superstar and don’t you forget it_ energy he always has with her. 

She starts to smile, but he continues, knocking her off balance. 

“So you, um...you don't feel as secure with me? As with the other guys? I mean, I get that you and Flynn have always been best friends and that’s different, but you got the lightsabers with Reggie and the sky stuff with Alex, and I just don’t—I mean, I didn’t think that we didn’t—” 

“No!” she interjects, suddenly finding herself on her feet, eyes wide and hands waving uselessly in front of her like she can brush away his words and his hurt. 

He blinks up at her. She takes a breath and presses on. 

“The guys—you—you're my family. Forever. But with you it’s also...different.” 

He leans forward, inching his face a little closer to her. 

_An interesting little relationship you and I have,_ she thinks, soft, somewhere in the back of her mind. 

“Different how?” 

She wrings her hands, embarrassed at how flustered she feels. What’s the big deal? This is _Luke._ Her writing partner. Her best friend. Her former-ghost bandmate. Her...well. She’s spent the better part of five years trying her best not to put it in words—something of a difficult feat for a chronic writer. 

“Jules?” he presses, stealing back her attention. He stands, too, and he’s towering over her a bit, gentle as ever. 

“Luke, you know what I’m talking about.” 

She chances a look back into his eyes and there’s an indecipherable glimmer in them that wasn’t there before. 

“Tell me anyway,” he says, and he sounds half breathless. His hand closes around hers, and she tries not to visibly jump at the sudden contact. 

Finally, Julie says, “I don’t know how to get a tattoo with you without...admitting it.” 

“Admitting what?” he asks, and his face is barely a breath from hers. 

“Luke—” 

He kisses her. 

10 

Julie's next tattoo is a ring of lyrics—her first permanent lyrics—looped around her left bicep in Luke’s half indecipherable handwriting. Another line, in Julie’s softer, clearer hand, rings the same spot on Luke’s right arm. 

She won’t lie, it does something funny to her chest to see her words, in her handwriting, marking his skin—and she sees it all the time, since a corporeal body and five years haven’t put a damper on his sleeve allergy. She figures he must feel the same way, based on how often his fingers slip up her arm to trace the shapes there. 

“Hey Jules?” 

They’re snuggled up on the couch in the studio, still flushed and victorious from the final going-away gig they’d thrown together, one last hurrah before they leave in the morning on a six-month tour across the globe. 

“Mmhm?” she asks. Her eyes are closed, arms curled around Luke’s back. She’s leaning back on the cushions, Luke flush against her, his head resting on her chest, both half asleep. 

He presses a kiss to her neck, then her cheek, and down her shoulder to kiss her tattoo, again and again, gentle and warm and sending shivers down her whole body. 

“I love you,” he murmurs. 

Julie’s breath catches. This isn’t the first time he’s said those words to her—they've said them countless times, them and the other guys, because of course they love each other. They’re family. But this is different. She knows by the softness of his voice, the intensity in his gaze when she looks at him. It’s only been a few months, since their first kiss, but it’s also been five years coming, so there’s no hesitation when she opens her mouth to reply—

“Luke! Julie! Where are you guys?” 

Alex and Reggie burst into the garage with all the energy of the party that Julie knows continues to burn outside, raucous and glorious and all in celebration of them. 

“Ugghh, go away,” Luke says, tossing a pillow half heartedly in their direction, but his smile lights up with delight at their appearance nonetheless. 

Their friends take in the sight of them, couple-y and precious, and pretend to take offense. 

“Nuh-uh,” Reggie says. “This is a band night, not a Jukebox couple night.” 

In terrifying sync, he and Alex jump onto the couch, piling on Luke and Julie and sending the whole band careening to the floor, screeching and giggling and out of breath. Luke wriggles his way across Alex's back to reclaim Julie’s hand in his as they all flop down against the rug. 

“Once again, you guys are just as disgustingly adorable as I always knew you’d be,” Alex says, shaking his head. 

“Hey!” Luke protests. 

Julie thinks about it. “I guess that was kind of a compliment,” she offers. 

“Really, though,” Reggie says. “We always knew this was gonna happen, didn’t we? What took you so long?” 

Truthfully? She doesn’t know. Fear, probably? Lack of faith in the miracle that let her keep Luke—keep all of them—this long in the first place? Paranoia for the effect on the band? Whatever it was, the knowledge of what it feels like to have Luke Patterson as her boyfriend makes her want to jump back in time and smack some sense into past Julie. 

“Honestly, I…I don’t think it matters.” Julie looks around at her boys, bright in the dimness, full of contentment, the ghosts on their arms half glowing with joy and passion and love. “I’m happy with where we ended up.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays Olivia!! I hope you’ve enjoyed the fic and the holiday season both. Best wishes for a very happy new year! 
> 
> See below for my typical overly wordy author notes :D 
> 
> As far as canon goes, I don’t really think the guys will actually turn out to be completely normally permanently alive again, nor do I know whether I would really want them to, but it felt like the best way to make them able to get tattoos in a canon verse, plus a healthy dose of easy-solution-happy-ending fluff. Go figure. I still may end up writing a story that focuses on that happening and, like, what that would actually look like. I have ideas that just didn’t have a place here. 
> 
> Obviously you are free to imagine the tattoos however you like, but these are what I was picturing while writing! 
> 
> [ghost tattoo](https://i.redd.it/0cymqym11rj41.jpg), more or less--I imagine it would be bigger (Julie, Reggie, Alex, Luke)  
> [dahlia](https://www.askideas.com/media/51/Attractive-Dahlia-Flower-Tattoo-Design-For-Leg-Calf.jpg) (for Rose)  
> [star and moon](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/56/e9/81/56e981ec0fb81c7f0d28b04581def6d7.jpg) (Alex + Julie)  
> [dice](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6b/21/64/6b21643d0534e47477e7367344f49a57.jpg) (Flynn + Julie)  
> [camera](https://cdn.sortra.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/camera-tattoos002.jpg) (for Ray)  
> [lightsabers](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9a/1e/8b/9a1e8b898528afbb741f006119dfa992.jpg)\--just one each, though (Reggie + Julie + bonus Carlos)  
> [paper airplanes](https://cdn.tattoosboygirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Black-and-White-Sibling-Tattoos-Design.jpg) (Carlos + Julie) 
> 
> In the same vein, I wanted to leave the lyrics Julie and Luke get tattooed up to the reader’s imagination, but if you’re curious for my headcanon (yes, headcanon of my own fic, why not): 
> 
> -Luke has _I feel your rhythm in my heart_ in Julie’s handwriting  
> -Julie has _You are my brightest burning star_ in Luke’s handwriting 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Come hang out elsewhere on the interwebs: 
> 
> tumblr – [romansuzume](https://romansuzume.tumblr.com)  
> twitter – [gingermaggiest](https://twitter.com/gingermaggiest)


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